Rishard Khan

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is com­mit­ting to over­haul and re­dou­ble ef­forts to fight crime in 2023 and will be­gin with pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions on the mat­ter. This was the promise made in his New Year’s mes­sage to the na­tion.

The sun set on 2022 as the blood­i­est in the coun­try’s his­to­ry with over 600 peo­ple be­ing mur­dered. Pub­lic fear and con­cern has been grow­ing as the bod­ies con­tin­ue to drop. Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said while crime was not a nov­el ex­pe­ri­ence in T&T, this year’s in­ci­dents war­rant a sec­ond look at the ap­proach.

“In 2022, we con­tin­ued to ex­pe­ri­ence the re­lent­less as­sault of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, re­sult­ing in a record num­ber of mur­ders, fa­cil­i­tat­ed, and bol­stered by oth­er alarm­ing in­ci­dents of crime, such as per­sis­tent gun run­ning, in­sti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion and fa­cil­i­ta­tion as well as the ever-present growth of gang ac­tiv­i­ty in many parts of the coun­try. Whilst none of this is new, it is clear that the scale and fre­quen­cy of these neg­a­tive strands of the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety re­quire con­stant re­view and more ro­bust tar­get­ed re­spons­es if we are to sup­press and erad­i­cate them from our fu­ture,” he said.

It is against this back­ground that Dr Row­ley said these in­creased ef­forts will be em­ployed. He said they will be fo­cused on five ar­eas, the sec­ond of which was men­tioned ear­li­er this year but nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

1. The util­i­sa­tion of the con­sid­er­able re­source al­lo­ca­tion to this sec­tor.

2. The pub­lic health con­sid­er­a­tion of crim­i­nal con­duct in our so­ci­ety.

3. A re­newed at­tempt at par­lia­men­tary in­ter­ven­tion in sup­port of the work of agen­cies and in­sti­tu­tions.

4. A con­tin­ued iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and ur­gent sup­port for “at risk” groups and ex­pan­sion of the many youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

5. Im­prove­ments in sus­tained and ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment.

He said this new ap­proach will be­gin with pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions ear­ly in the new year and will be fol­lowed by nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tions.

While he ac­knowl­edged the scourge of crime, Dr Row­ley warned against re­duc­ing the coun­try’s iden­ti­ty to just this.

“Some peo­ple may feel jus­ti­fied in see­ing our ex­is­tence on­ly through the prism of the neg­a­tive lens­es, and be­lieve that run­away crim­i­nal­i­ty is the hall­mark and high­light of our ef­forts, but I in­vite you to take note that our cir­cum­stances are not unique and that there is a whole lot of good that is Trinidad and To­ba­go, a lot of suc­cess that we have at­tained in a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od and a lot of good that we can look for­ward to in 2023 and be­yond,” he said.

Dr Row­ley al­so called on cit­i­zens to recog­nise their own civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and to do their part in help­ing in the fight against crime.

“Recog­nise crime as a pub­lic emer­gency in which every cit­i­zen has a part to play. If you see some­thing harm­ful or threat­en­ing, say some­thing. We have es­tab­lished safe chan­nels where your in­for­ma­tion can as­sist. Hold up your pa­tri­ot­ic and eth­i­cal du­ty to play an ac­tive role in so­ci­ety, by show­ing your par­tic­i­pa­tion and ad­vance­ment for the com­mon good of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“Every­one has to be mind­ful, aware and alert to his or her role as a cit­i­zen, be­ing phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly ‘in the now’ with de­lib­er­ate, open and cu­ri­ous at­ten­tion to bet­ter our coun­try.”

The Prime Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged there will be some chal­lenges that will con­tin­ue in­to 2023. He said while the coun­try saw a bud­get sur­plus in fis­cal 2021/2022 due to in­creased fu­el prices be­cause of the on­go­ing war in Ukraine, it has al­so caused in­creased glob­al in­fla­tion. De­spite this, he said the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to pro­tect cit­i­zens against these in­creased prices.

“So, while we ex­pe­ri­ence an im­prove­ment in our do­mes­tic bal­ances, one of the high­est risks to our well-be­ing is glob­al in­fla­tion, which, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is touch­ing the lives of every con­sumer in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause we are part of this glob­al econ­o­my and are not in­su­lat­ed from its myr­i­ad shocks,” he said.

“I as­sure you that in 2023 the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to con­tain high and ris­ing prices which, I know, are erod­ing work­ers’ pur­chas­ing pow­er and the val­ue of their ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sav­ings.”

He not­ed that de­spite the in­creased fu­el cost T&T con­tin­ues to en­joy some of the low­est en­er­gy costs in the re­gion, and its fu­el prices are still be­low com­pa­ra­ble mar­ket prices. He added that while the coun­try’s in­fla­tion rate is in­creas­ing, it is still well be­low what is ex­pe­ri­enced in many oth­er coun­tries.

So far, the PM said, we have been able to over­come the worst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but we need to keep our eyes on the ex­ter­nal con­fir­ma­tions that it is not over, giv­en the re­cent surge of new cas­es in Chi­na, and the re­port­ed in­crease in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion in the Unit­ed States. Even more con­cern­ing, he said, is that some trav­el re­stric­tions have be­gun to be rein­tro­duced in some parts of the world.

Be­gin­ning this week, the Gov­ern­ment plans to ramp up its boost­er vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign, large­ly tar­get­ing the el­der­ly and most vul­ner­a­ble as well as the un­vac­ci­nat­ed.